Cartwheel has over 25 years experience of promoting imaginative, and often challenging arts projects - we do not shy from confronting difficult or sensitive issues. Our focus is on participation, enabling people who may have had little experience of the arts to explore and develop their creativity and talents, generating a sense of ownership and pride.
We work with communities of all shapes and sizes to devise and deliver exciting, colourful participatory arts projects, which can be all shapes and sizes too, and sometimes quite noisy. Participation and collaboration is key to our work. It can develop confidence and skills for the individual, and build active, stronger communities with a positive self image. We don’t say that everyone can be a brilliant artist, but we do believe that many people have untapped potential because they have not had the opportunity or the confidence to take part in creative activity.

It is still the case that working class people, members of black and minority ethnic (BME) communities and people with disabilities are under-represented in our art colleges, galleries and concert halls. So we do encourage people with talent to make the most of their opportunities and believe in themselves. We use a wide variety of artforms thanks to our large pool of freelance artists and work in many different settings with a range of partners sometimes in unusual combinations. So poetry workshops with primary school children can lead to carnival arts workshops wi